The hand filling of paddle cavities is a difficult operation particularly as in the case of culture paddles where the cavities are shallow and must be substantially completely filled with a liquid culture medium. Such culture paddles are used to culture microorganisms obtained from a patient's body as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,616,265 which is incorporated herein by reference. Typically, a culture medium is a liquid at elevated temperature and solidifies at room temperature rapidly. The operation is further complicated by the necessity in some cases of filling cavities on two opposite sides of a culture paddle. Also, further complexity is frequently involved where it is necessary to mix an additional ingredient such as, for example, blood with the culture medium immediately before filling the paddles. This invention provides an efficient machine for solving these problems and similar problems in connection with filling other bodies with elongated cavities.
Peristaltic pumps employing one or more resilient tubes and reciprocating rollers are known to the art for the sterile filling of ampuls. Conveyor wheels which are operated in step fashion in filling machines are also known to the art.